From Abracadabra to Zombies

Book Review

“I do not study anomalies.
I study the fundamental nature of the human mind!” -- Charles Tart

Why would I, a card-carrying philosophical materialist and
debunker of spirits and the paranormal, read a book that declares in its
title that materialism is dead and has been slain by evidence of the
paranormal? One reason is that Charles Tart is one of the most interesting,
intelligent, knowledgeable, and eloquent promoters of many ideas
that I have come to reject. I wanted to find out if he had come up with
any compelling new arguments that would persuade me to change my mind about
spirits, telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis, psychic healing, life after death, and the
like. Another reason is that I try to practice what I preach. For thirty
years I told my students that critical thinking requires that one seek and
take seriously the arguments of those who disagree with them. Finally,
although I didn't read the book to stimulate my thinking about how to
respond to the occasional e-mail I get asking me how I can live in such a
meaningless universe, it turns out that answering that question is something
I had to do in my review. Below is an example of one such
e-mail that arrived as I was writing this review:

Hi,

Bob here reporting from sunny Baja California. I
found your site while searching "Creationism" or something.

So what's the answer? I would much rather
believe a believable lie than such a cold thing as (remember the
song?) "we are flukes of the universe, we have no right to be
here." I've pondered the imponderable, such as "why would God
allow evil to enter his perfect creation?" And, "if it's all an
accident, why can't I kill everybody I don't like?"

Where are you going with your web site? What do
you hope to accomplish? How are you making the world a better
place?

If it's all an accident and it's "survival of
the fittest" Why do anything positive instead of just protecting
your personal interests? I think I would rather believe in aliens
than evolution. It's so meaningless.

I don't need an answer. But really, I think
you're wasting good bandwidth that I could use to download songs.

Tart's book is just the kind of thing that someone
like Bob in sunny Baja might find to his taste. Anyone looking for
new evidence or new arguments in support of immaterialism and the
paranormal should look elsewhere.

Tart says he wrote The End of Materialism "to
help those who've experienced conflicts between their spiritual and
scientific sides, or who are simply interested in aspects of science and the
spiritual." These days I fall into the latter category (who doesn't?) In my
younger days, however, I fell into the former category. Unlike Tart, who
also admits to having to deal with this conflict, I have resolved the
dissonance by gradually finding little of interest in the spiritual and more
of interest in science, but not the kind of science Tart does (parapsychology).

Tart has devoted much of his life in recent years to
helping others overcome the effects of scientism on those who seek
transcendence. (I'm not going to try to define words like 'spiritual' or
'transcendence' at this point because I think the inherent vagueness,
ambiguity, and obscurity of those concepts is at the heart of what Tart's
enterprise is all about. Dealing with them up front will only muddy the
already murky waters.)

Like Tart, I believe that one need not choose between science
and spirituality. One can pursue both, neither, or one or the other. He
chooses both. I agree with him that to reject science is foolish. I don't
find any need to seek anything "spiritual," but I don't find it necessarily
foolish to do so. The pursuit of the spiritual is obviously something many
people find necessary. They see no reason to live if there isn't something
more than the material world. I can't remember ever feeling that way, even
when I was a churchgoer (not that the religious is the same as the
spiritual). I can't ever remember thinking to myself: "why don't these
atheists just kill themselves? What's the point in living if this is all
there is?" I think I've always felt that "this" is usually better than the
alternative, that is, that being able to perceive, learn, enjoy, and even
suffer, is better than not existing at all. I've been fortunate not to have
suffered any great physical pain for an extended period of time. I've never
had to deal with a natural disaster that killed all my loved ones. I've
never had to go to war. I understand why some people might not want to
exist, but I don't understand those who believe that life would not be worth
living if they didn't have an immortal soul or some such thing.

More common, perhaps, than spiritual people who see no reason
to live if the material world is all there is, are those who would find life
empty or meaningless if there were no spiritual dimension to it. Here I can
empathize, for I do remember at one time feeling that my religion (again,
I'm not equating religion with spirituality) not only gave me a purpose in
life, but without it life would have no purpose. I don't think I came to
think this way on my own. I believe I was taught this by my parents and
religion teachers. When I grew up and became a student of philosophy
(literally), I realized the error of this position. Meaning or purpose is
not something that has to be given to you by another being. You do not have
to be created to worship God, for example, in order to have a purpose in
life. Some of the confusion about meaning and living is due to conflating a
teleological universe (one that has a purpose) with a purposeful life. They
have no relation to one another. The universe may be designed for a reason
by some being or group of beings, but my life doesn't thereby become
meaningful. In fact, if I were created only to fulfill a purpose given to me
by my creator, my life would seem meaningless to me. I would be a puppet or
plaything of the creator. A meaningful life is one that is fulfilling. As a
child, of course, I could have no idea as to what would be a fulfilling life
for me. As an adult, I see that there are many different kinds of lives that
are meaningful or fulfilling. There is not one kind of life that everybody
must lead in order to lead a purposeful, meaningful life.

Tart's characterization of "scientistic materialism"
as implying that human beings are nothing but an "inherently meaningless
chemical accident" is at the core of his attack on materialism. It is also
his biggest error. It is true that we atheistic materialists do not believe
that the universe was created by anyone and that it does not have an
inherent purpose. There is no single reason you and I, or the universe,
exist. There are lots of reasons or causes that have had to conjoin for the
universe to exist as it does today and for our being here. But it seems
pretty evident to me that we're not
here to fulfill anybody's plan. The number of
contingencies that had to occur for each of us to be here today is
staggering. If you had to predict it some 13 billion years ago, you would
probably say our existence is impossible. It is a monumental leap to jump
from that fact to the belief that my life is meaningless and without
purpose. The universe may be purposeless and the result of billions of
chance causes, but it is governed by the inherent nature of matter and
energy, and thus has some order. Trying to discover that order, what
makes the universe tick, is what science is all about. In any case, just
because humans haven't evolved on our planet to fulfill anybody's design or
purpose does not mean that every human is doomed to a
meaningless existence. You can spend your days engaged in meaningless,
purposeless activities, if you so desire. But you are not doomed to do so.
It's up to you. Well, it's up to you within limits. Circumstances, many of
which you have no control over, will limit your opportunities.

I think this error, which we might call the spiritualist
fallacy, is what leads Tart to say: "If materialism is really true, my
reaction is eat, drink, and be merry (and don't get caught by others if they
don't approve of your pleasure), for tomorrow we die—and
life doesn't mean anything anyway" (p. 20, although at another
place in the book he tells us that if materialism were true, he'd be
devoting his life to health and longevity, and might have to take
mood-enhancing drugs for depression). I believe materialism is true,
but I don't agree with Tart that I should therefore lead a frivolous life,
indifferent to the effect I might have on others. My life can be meaningful
whether life in general is meaningful (whatever that might mean!) or whether
materialism is true or false.

What I think really gnaws at Tart is not so much a sincere
belief that if the universe is purposeless, then so is his life, but rather
the discomfort he is made to feel by atheistic materialists who see his
spiritual longings as foolish, irrational, unscientific, even "crazy" (p.
8; he repeats this claim many times throughout the book). He begins chapter two by describing the "very uncomfortable position" of
"yearning for something higher than simple material gratification, something
'spiritual,'" and living in a world that "seems to tell you in no uncertain
terms that you yearn for nothing but fantasy—superstitious,
outmoded nonsense that will make you less fit to live in the 'real' world."
"Something in us yearns," he says, "for this higher thing we vaguely call
'spirit,' but we don't want to feel stupid or crazy." I have a hard time
empathizing with this attitude because when I was a spiritual person I
thought those who weren't spiritual were foolish and were devoting their lives to
nonsense. I felt special rather than uncomfortable. As an adult
(and an atheistic materialist) I've felt uncomfortable at times when working
with people who thought I must be immoral and a bad person because I didn't
believe in God. But the discomfort was no greater than that felt when I was
made to think I was doing something immoral by drinking a Coors beer
or a cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Transpersonal Psychology & The Western
Creed

In any case, before moving on to discuss what Tart means by
'spiritual' and what the evidence is for the paranormal that will bring
science and spirit together to crush materialism, I have a couple of other
bones to pick regarding his characterization of materialists.

As a psychologist, Tart recognizes how our beliefs can
unconsciously hinder our ability to achieve our goals. He has worked to
develop what is called transpersonal psychology in an effort,
among other things, to identify beliefs in our culture that hinder individuals
from succeeding in their spiritual quest and to design ways to overcome the
hindrance these beliefs pose. He has developed a tool for his workshops to
help people see that the beliefs of (what he considers to be) scientistic
materialism are the main roadblocks to the spiritually inclined. The tool is
a belief experiment during which one tries to accept as beliefs what he
calls The Western Creed. Rather than try to explain this exercise, I will
direct you to a website where you can see it in action:
http://www.westerncreed.com/Tart_ITP.html

I found little discomfort in reciting the creed because I
agree with most of the statements included in it. I believe
the universe is material, that there is no non-material reality, that the
universe had no creator and has no objective meaning or destiny, that belief
in spirits and gods are delusions, that consciousness is a purely physical
process, that values arise from biological determinants, that churches have
no real use except to provide social support, and that there is no
afterlife.

There were
a couple of items in The Western Creed, however, that made me uncomfortable, not because they are
false and I would be unhappy if they were true, but because I know they are
mischaracterizations of what materialists like myself actually believe.

The worst of the false words put into the mouths of the
materialist, in my opinion, are these:

Like the rest of life, my life and my consciousness have no
objective purpose, meaning, or destiny.

Most rational values I can personally live by must be based
on the knowledge that for me what pleases me is good, what pains me is bad.

Rationality requires that friends and enemies be used in ways
that maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain.

Virtue for me is getting what I want without
being caught and punished by others.

I've already addressed falsity number one, that if the
universe has no meaning or purpose then neither can I. The other three
falsities boil down to a belief that materialists are selfish hedonists
whose interest in others is solely to use them to advance our selfish,
hedonistic ends. This belief seems to be based
not on empirical evidence that atheistic materialists are usually selfish
hedonists, but on the fear that if I don't believe in God
or something transcendent I'll become a selfish hedonist. The correlate
to this belief is the notion that God is a necessary condition for
morality. Pierre Bayle covered this misconception centuries ago much
better than I could ever hope to, so I refer the reader to his
Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697) entries on
atheism and
Spinoza. (I briefly address this issue in my article on
atheism.)

What troubles Tart, however, is not that he can't trust
materialistic atheists or that he suffers anxiety attacks at the thought of
becoming one himself. No. What troubles Tart is that he and many other
spiritual questers "have been hurt by ... a widespread social put-down that
has invalidated our spiritual hopes and dreams and told us we're fools.
We've been hurt not only in the sense of feeling like fools but also in
possibly feeling on a deeper level that we've missed out on what's really
important, missed out on the higher things of life, or have experienced
neurotic suffering as the spiritually affirming and materialistically
denying parts of our minds struggle."

I wouldn't feel too sorry for him, however. He's made a
career out of identifying the scientistic materialistic beliefs that he
thinks give rise to some folk's neuroticism, and he's devised "therapies" to
help people achieve their spiritual goals. There is a substantial subculture
that feels as Tart does, that will attend his workshops and talks, and buy
his books. He should be grateful for
scientism, instead of
railing against it. It provides him with a hook to catch unhappy spiritual
questers. The problem is not science but scientism, he tells us. Science, he
thinks, is his friend because he thinks science has found compelling
evidence for the paranormal, which is one place where Tart seems to find a
lot of "spirituality." Scientism, on the other hand, is the enemy because it
is embedded in our culture and subconsciously subverts the spiritual quest, while
consciously making questers feel like superstitious idiots. The goal of Tart's
book, it seems, is to slay the enemy with science and proclaim clear sailing
for believers in the paranormal and the spirit world.

cosmic consciousness

"This book," Tart tells us, "is the culmination of a career
spanning more than fifty years of work on the nature of consciousness,
particularly altered states of consciousness, parapsychology, and
transpersonal psychology...." It might come as a surprise to some people,
then, that Tart's name is not one that pops up very often in the scientific
literature on consciousness. The reason for this is that very few scientists
or philosophers working on the nature of consciousness think the paranormal
or the spirit world has anything of interest to reveal about consciousness.
Susan Blackmore, who worked as a parapsychologist for many years, notes in
her book
Consciousness: An Introduction (2004). that “most of what we have
learned so far [in studying consciousness]….seems to point away” from the
existence of minds that are separate from brains that can magically affect
the world. “Parapsychology,” she says, “Seems to be growing further away
from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.”
Blackmore does acknowledge Tart's devotion to the study of
altered states of
consciousness, especially drug-induced ASCs. The focus of her chapter on
the subject, which profiles Tart, is similar to the focus of most scientific
research on the subject: the effect on perception, memory, and the like, of
chemical stimulants, depressants, and psychedelics. The reason Tart is ignored in the field of consciousness studies is
that he thinks consciousness is a non-material entity, not subject to the
natural laws that govern such things as brain function and neurological
disorders. His interest in ASCs seems to be mainly to find evidence that can
be used to fortify his belief in the transcendent. He seems to have little
interest in learning how the brain works and how chemicals affect the brain
to produce perceptions, memories, etc. Like some other scientists with
strong spiritual yearnings, Tart sees chemicals in drugs as opening the
doors of perception to another world, a transcendent world, a world where

...the soul of man is immortal...the universe is so built and
ordered that without any peradventure, all things work together for the good
of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call
love and that the happiness of everyone is, in the long run, absolutely
certain.

This
vision of "cosmic consciousness" was produced by psychiatrist
Richard Maurice
Bucke (1837-1902). Tart introduces it very early in his book and
returns to it again and again. Unlike Tart, Bucke did not come to this vision
as a result of studying the evidence for the supernatural or the paranormal
and reasoning logically from that evidence to the conclusion that it is
highly probable that these things are true. Bucke's vision came to him after
reading poetry by the likes of Wordsworth,
Shelley, Keats, and Whitman. The
experience was life changing, said Bucke. That kind of life-changing
"illumination" is what Tart considers to be "spiritual." Tart doesn't seem
to have had any great mystical experiences himself, but he clearly longs for
one, even one in the
perineal area, which is where his friend Allan Smith's began (p. 332). "Spirituality," he says, has been a matter of personal choice.
If I had to come up with a description of what spirituality means to Tart,
I'd have to say that for him spirituality is a kind of mood enhancer. It's a
word he uses to describe a kind of fuzzy feeling that his life is meaningful
and important, and that despite all the apparent evidence to the contrary,
everything is good and we're all going to find happiness when we escape the
physical world. It's a common sentiment of "spiritual" people and, as Tart
notes, it is not identical with being religious. This cosmic vision leads one to find
cheerfulness and hope in a world that often seems hopelessly demented and
bent on destroying everything good and decent. It is the vision that says
"peace on earth and good will toward men." How can anyone be against such a
noble sentiment? I'm not. But Tart doesn't promise us a poem. He promises us
the scientific evidence that will be the end of materialism and teases the
reader with the hope of survival of consciousness after death. And he promises
that that evidence is to be found in research on the paranormal. Does he
deliver the goods?

Tart's primary evidence for the paranormal
and its connection to the spiritual

Tart claims that "direct experience is always the final
arbiter of what's the best truth" and that science has discovered that some
experiences "cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations." He divides
science into two kinds. He calls parapsychology, or any science that
supports belief in the non-material realm, "essential science." Science that
denies the non-material realm is "scientism."
(He also distinguishes skepticism ["an honest search for better
truths"] from pseudoskepticism ["debunking"].) He ignores the rest of
science, which is what
99.99% of science is: the attempt to understand and explain the natural
world without reference to a supernatural world. Natural science doesn't
deny the existence of the supernatural or the transcendent, but it does deny
that reference to such metaphysical notions to explain anything in the
natural world is science rather than philosophy. There are, of course,
some scientists who are parapsychologists and materialists.
Dean Radin,
for example, makes it clear that he and others think that someday psi will
be explained by natural laws as yet undiscovered, and that possibly quantum
physics with its concepts of weird things like entanglement might
provide the science needed to explain such things as precognition, etc. Tart
praises Radin, but he makes it clear that he does not think quantum physics
is the answer to the parapsychologist's prayers. Tart still puts his money
on the view that psi won't be explained by quantum physics. He doesn't even
mention
Brian Josephson.

Tart implies that he is going to provide, or at least review, the
compelling evidence for telepathy,
clairvoyance (remote
viewing), precognition,
psychokinesis, and
psychic healing. He calls these the "big five."
He tells us that the evidence
for their existence had been established before he entered the field.
Because he considered psi a done deal when he began his career, he focused
on experiments that would test things like how to enhance psi ability. It
should come as no surprise that when he finally gets to the chapter for the
first of the "big five," telepathy, he offers no new evidence and provides
only a cursory look at the work done on the subject. "It's always been clear
to me," he writes, "that nonacceptance of [evidence for the reality of
paranormal phenomena like telepathy] was almost always for irrational
reasons, so I never saw the point in collecting more proof-of-existence
evidence that would also be irrationally ignored." This attitude seems to
have protected Tart from any doubts about the value of
his career. It certainly blocked him from taking critics seriously. (If the
reader wants a review of supportive evidence for telepathy, I suggest
reading Dean Radin's
The Conscious Universe, though Radin also considers critics of the
paranormal to be irrational and suffering from some sort of psychological
disorder.)

telepathy

Although Tart doesn't provide any new evidence for telepathy,
he does review some of his own early work on using immediate feedback to
enhance psi ability. He claims he got positive results, but was unable to do
the large-scale replication study needed to impress the scientific community
because he couldn't get funding. His complaint is a familiar one among
parapsychologists, but in his case the
lack-of-funding-prevented-me-from-doing-a-proper-study argument doesn't ring
true. I don't doubt that his grant proposal was rejected, as he says, and
that at least one scientist who saw his proposal thought it was a good one.
But Tart had his chance at the big bucks when Robert Bigelow, a wealthy Las
Vegas businessman, decided to throw a good chunk of his fortune into the
parapsychology hat. After retiring from
the University of California at Davis psychology department, Tart
spent a year developing a curriculum and teaching as the director of
Robert Bigelow’s endowed
Chair of
Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Bigelow
gave nearly $4 million to UNLV in 1997 to investigate such subjects as
dreams, meditation, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, and the
ever-popular subject among college students, drug-induced altered states of
consciousness. (In 1971, Tart authored
On Being Stoned: A Psychological Study of Marijuana Intoxication.)
Bigelow pulled the plug on the program in 2002. No explanation was
given, but perhaps the fact that in five years the program had produced
nothing of interest—despite being led by Tart,
Raymond Moody, and Dean
Radin—might have had something to do with it. One wonders
why Tart
didn't use some of Bigelow's money to do the large-scale study he
lamented not being able to do because of lack of funding. Instead, he seems
to have used the money to promote what he already believed to be true.

Even more disappointing is Tart's attempt to explain why
telepathy is nonphysical. It's nonphysical, he says, because it can't work
like a radio, quantum physics hasn't yet found a physical explanation for
it, and hoping for a physical explanation for telepathy to be found in the
future isn't scientific. (For that matter, hoping for a non-physical
explanation for telepathy isn't scientific, either.) None of these reasons
are compelling. I agree with Tart that there is no physical way a
mind in California can directly communicate with a mind in Australia without
using something like a telephone, which, by the way, seems to be a much more
efficient and accurate way to communicate with someone at a distance than
trying to read his mind. I was hoping, however, that he might provide this skeptic
with some new evidence in support of the view that telepathy is real. After
all, if evidence for the paranormal is going to bring science and spirit
together to end materialism, you'd think he'd put more emphasis on the
evidence. No. Tart assumes the evidence is in. He tells us that he has been
"personally bored for decades with the controversy" over whether "psi
perceptions provide a sound basis for openness to the reality that at least
some spiritual aspects really exist." His task, I guess, is to
explain how the evidence undermines materialism and supports
dualism. Some readers are
going to recognize, however, that you don't undermine materialism by
assuming that processes occur that can't be explained by physical means
today and are unlikely to be explained by physical means tomorrow. When one
joins this assumption and the belief that skeptical critics are irrational
with the rejection of any alternative explanations for
the data (psychological, statistical, physical, pathological, etc.), one has
created an impenetrable shield around one's beliefs.

Some readers might find Tart's belief that psi provides
evidence of our spiritual nature a bit perplexing. What does telepathy have to do with
spirituality, some might ask? Everything, according to Tart. Telepathy, he
says, might be the mechanism involved in prayer and could provide scientific
evidence for belief in prayer's
efficacy. It should not be surprising that Tart does not examine
the scientific
studies that have attempted to test the efficacy of prayer. If he did,
he might have to consider that these tests indicate telepathy is an
illusion. Some readers will find it annoying that Tart repeatedly asserts
that the data is primary and theorizing is secondary, while he skips over or
ignores the data that is inconvenient to his theories.

Despite his awareness of the power of how cognitive biases
can blind us to the implications of evidence and lead us to confirm our
biases despite overwhelming evidence against our views, Tart seems to have
been blinded by his desire for spiritual experience. "Without the meaning
that spiritual experience gives life," he writes, "I imagine I'd be quite
depressed." He reminds me of what psychologists were like when they were
philosophers rather than scientists, when introspection was their field of
inquiry. If you want to know more about the inner workings and private
thoughts of Charles Tart, by all means read his book (although he doesn't
reveal much about his personal life—he and wife camp and
he's never been to Rome). If you are looking for
new evidence or insights into the old evidence for the paranormal, you'll be
wasting your time reading The End of Materialism. When he says that
"we" ignore psi and spirituality at our own peril, he means he would
do so at his own peril.

One reason he feels the way he does about the importance of
immaterialism is his mistaken notion that spirituality has provided us with
our most important values. He is correct in claiming that materialistic
science didn't give us transcendent values, but he is incorrect in assuming
we need spirit to provide a basis for our values. I discussed this above and
only want to mention at this point that values like tolerance, liberty, and
equality are argued for most forcefully by secular philosophers like
John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Even John Milton's
argument for freedom of
speech is secular. Our important values are neither materialist nor
spiritual. Tart exposes his anti-materialist bias when he asserts that
"materialists reject the idea that there's anything special about
life....Life simply means that when you get just the right combinations of
physics and chemistry, you get self-sustaining, self-reproducing actions
that constitute life as we know it." Nothing could more special than life,
especially when one considers
the difficulty scientists
have had in creating living things out of non-living materials. Once
life is here it may seem inevitable and abundant, but it is with awe and
wonder that this materialist looks at the story so far about the origins of
life. Life not special?! Such a thought is inconceivable to me.

clairvoyance (remote viewing)

As with his chapter on telepathy, there is no new evidence
for clairvoyance presented here. Much of the chapter is devoted to
describing how remote viewing experiments are done and singing the praises
of the likes of Hal
Puthoff and Russell Targ. He repeats the same stories Radin and others
have presented, such as the one about
Pat Price and Star Gate
and the Pearce-Pratt
experiment.

How about Tart's evidence or argument that clairvoyance
supports a belief in the immaterial world? There's not much here to
consider. He simply asserts that "clairvoyance, as we currently know it, is
nonphysical from the perspective of a classical, Newtonian universe" and it
can't be explained by "extremely low-frequency electromagnetic radiation
(ELF)." Again, as long as one rejects alternative explanations for the data,
Tart's case is airtight, even if it begs the
question.

precognition

How about precognition? Does Tart have any new evidence or
arguments to present in support either of precognition or of immateriality?
If you've been following the story so far, you are able to see what's ahead
without resorting to any psychic devices. The only surprise in this
chapter is that in one of Tart's frequent excursions into his own mind and
belief system, he reveals that he finds the idea of precognition
incomprehensible and doesn't want to believe in it because it would take
away free will and make "life both senseless and boring." Unlike Bob on the
beach in Baja, however, Tart is willing to look at the data and he is
impressed. Unfortunately, it is the
same data that Radin's
gone over, including a heap of praise for meta-analysis by Honorton and
Ferrari, and offers nothing new. Also, despite his dislike of the idea of
precognition, he claims that he has proof of it from his own experiments. He
did what many other psi researchers have done: he turned a failure
to produce psi into a success by moving the goalposts. Instead of evaluating
how his subjects (or co-investigators) did in a card-guessing experiment, he evaluated how they did with respect to
the card that came after the target card. Magically, he turned
psi-missing into
psi-hitting. Perversely, Tart turns this trick of changing the goal of an
experiment after the data is in from a vice to a virtue. Since he didn't
want to believe in precognition, but the data supported it, he was making
"the data primary over theory and belief." That sounds much better
than "mining the data."

As noted above, Tart seems more interested in himself than in
the evidence for his beliefs. His attitude toward precognition provides
another example of his preoccupation with his own personal development
rather than with the impersonal world of scientific research. Not only does
he tell us about how he overcame his aversion to the concept of precognition
by turning psi-missing into psi-hitting, he tells us that he even came up
with a theory to explain the process of psi-missing. He calls his idea "transtemporal
inhibition" and wonders in bold print whether he's come up with a
breakthrough discovery or just a clever idea. He tells us he hasn't tested
the idea, but that others should. This time he doesn't blame lack of funding
for not doing the science and testing an idea that he describes as
"perhaps...my most important scientific discovery...." He tells us that he
got interested in remote viewing research, which he considered "sexier" than
what he was doing. And, he says, he needed to devote a lot more time to his
"personal spiritual-growth work."

I find it hard to imagine a scientist in any other field
thinking he had discovered a breakthrough idea but leaving it to others to
find out. From what I understand of the history of science, breakthrough
ideas are few and far between. They are what gives science the necessary
tools to progress in knowledge. It is surprising, then, to find Tart rather
indifferent about the fate of his "possible" great idea. Testing it by
trying to devise experiments that might falsify it, rather than looking to
what others have found to see if they might provide confirmation for it,
would have set Tart off as a first-tier scientist. Instead, he comes across
as lazy and indifferent, more interested in his own thoughts and spiritual
growth than in the progress of parapsychology.

As with telepathy, clairvoyance (remote viewing), and
precognition, Tart has nothing new to add to the evidence for the reality of
PK. He brings up the
famous case of D. D. Home,
which he defends on the curious grounds that men in olden times were no more
susceptible to trickery than parapsychologists today. Tart ignores
the history of psi
research that is replete with examples of eminent men of science being
duped by children, magicians, conjurers of all sorts, and even subjects in
their psi experiments. Tart is absolutely correct: eminent scientists today
are just as susceptible to being deceived and tricked as they were one
hundred and fifty years ago!

Tart also cites Dean Radin's meta-analysis (with Diane
Ferrari) of PK studies, mostly involving trying to affect the outcome of a
roll of a die. I've dealt with
Radin's work on PK
elsewhere, so I won't repeat myself here. Some readers, familiar with
the history of psi research, might find it odd that Tart makes no mention of
Robert Jahn's work (PEAR),
Helmut Schmidt, or Jeffrey Mishlove's book on Ted Owens,
The PK Man. Instead, he spends much of the chapter reviewing some
work on trying to affect the outcome of a coin flip that he did with Andrija
Puharich in 1957. The work is so old, he didn't even remember it himself. He
tells us he had to review some old papers to remind himself that one fellow
in a trial got 100 out of 100! (He may have forgotten this trial, he says,
because he may have a deep resistance to PK.) Tart also reviews some
experiments he did in the 1970s with a machine he had built to do coin
tosses. He seems more impressed with the machine than with any evidence for
PK.

Tart does provide an innovative example of special pleading
in parapsychology by saying that data mining when an experiment indicates no
psi effect is actually looking for "some sort of secondary effect," which,
he says, "is relatively common in parapsychological studies." This, he says,
has led some in the field to think that there's something "inherently
perverse" about psi phenomena, that researchers are being "teased" by it.
"It's as if psi happens often enough to keep us interested, but not reliably
or strongly enough for us to be certain about it or apply it very well."
Indeed.

psychic healing

Tart makes no argument regarding the nonmaterial nature of
either psychokinesis or psychic healing, so it is not clear how he thinks
either of these phenomena support either his linkage of science to the
spirit world or his claim that psi provides evidence for the immaterial
nature of mind. He expresses his admiration for
Larry Dossey in
this chapter, but the only research he presents in favor of psychic healing
was done in 1965 and it involved non-replicated studies on barley seeds and
mice. Tart doesn't even mention
the healing
prayer studies published in the last decade, much less make an effort to
evaluate them. He skirts over the whole issue of psychic healing in a little
over six pages, as if he were bored with having to present all this
wearisome data!

In the end, Tart's case for the end of materialism is
underwhelming. He doesn't even do a good job of presenting a strong case for
the existence of any of the "big five" psi phenomena. This book couldn't
help anyone who is conflicted about the spirit world because it is written
as if there is no need to prove the existence either of psi or of spirits.
It is written for those who already reject materialism, accept the reality
of the paranormal, and don't really care one way or the other what science
has to say about either.

Tart's secondary evidence for the paranormal
and its connection to the spiritual

Given his treatment of the "big five," the reader need not be
precognitive to predict that Tart is not going to provide any slam-dunk
evidence or arguments from the research in areas he considers possibilities
but not yet proven: postcognition, OBEs,
NDEs, communication with the dead, and
reincarnation. This should disappoint some readers, since these
secondary topics, with the exception of postcognition, are traditionally linked to the spirit world, while the
"big five," with the exception of healing prayer, are not. It is certainly possible that a non-material mind comes
into existence with the brain in some animals, including humans and dogs,
but such an epiphenomenon could just as easily go out of existence with the
death of the animal in which the brain resides. For most people with
"spiritual" inclinations, this would not be very satisfying. They want to
live forever and they want to live, for the most part, without the bad side
of having a physical body. They want to be able to do things that they now
do with a body, such as feel, perceive, worship, think, and the like. But
they don't want any meanness or pain, except for those they would condemn to
eternal torments in hell. The literature on out-of-body and near-death
experiences, on reincarnation, and on mediums getting messages from the dead
seems more likely to be attractive to those who want to live forever as a
"spirit." Yet, the research in these areas, in Tart's opinion, hasn't proved
to a high degree of probability the reality of a spirit detached from the
body.

out-of-body-experiences

Tart believes that some OBEs may involve a mind that leaves a
body, but most are either hallucinations or perceptual constructions (simulations,
is Tart's word for it) informed by ESP.
Tart's view is that "our minds and bodies are telepathically and
psychokinetically connected to wherever the mind is 'located'." Thus, for
Tart, an OBE or an NDE "may well be another semiarbitrary, constructed
simulation of whatever reality actually is." As far as we know, he says, the
mind could be "located somewhere other than the physical body, and may or
may not use ESP to learn about the 'outside' place where it is, rather
than its being completely absorbed in the brain and nervous system
simulation of the physical reality around the physical body." In short, we
may have a soul that is not dwelling in the body. If this sounds like
philosophy rather than science that's because it is. Before Charles Tart
was born and even before modern science developed, we knew that we may have
a soul that can exist independently of the body. This knowledge didn't and
can't end materialism. Of course, dualism is possible. Tart, however,
falsely promises to show that dualism is true,
that there are some things that can't be explained by anything but dualism.
He doesn't fulfill his promise.

near-death experiences

In his discussion of NDEs, Tart continues with his exposition
of what he thinks is going on between our mind and our brain. The mind gets
intimate knowledge of the brain and body by auto-clairvoyance and
uses auto-PK to affect the operation of the brain. Surely he knows
this is not a testable hypothesis. Or does he? He says we need "an immense
amount of research" to fill in the details of his solution to the mind-body
problem. I can't imagine that kind of scientific research on the brain
producing anything but evidence for materialism. It seems likely that
neuroscience will continue to discover that electrical or chemical
stimulation of certain parts of the brain can evoke NDE-like or OBE-like
experiences. Philosophical speculators like Tart will probably continue
to imagine alternative explanations, but since philosophers don't usually do
brain science, it is unlikely any research they do will shed much light on
these issues. What kind of experiment could detect a non-physical mind using PK to produce an NDE?

Tart simply asserts that some things can't be explained
materialistically, but once again he shows only that it is possible to come
up with a model of experience that postulates a non-material mind. We've had
such models for millennia.

Tart's main message, the one that is likely to resonate with
his uncritical readers, is that materialism or scientism denies and
invalidates "spiritual or transpersonal longings and experiences." This has
a "psychopathological effect" on some people, causing them "unnecessary
individual suffering," isolation, and cynicism. This makes the world a worse
place, he thinks.

Given the fact that those of us who don't have these longings
to live forever without the bad side of having a body are far outnumbered by
those who do, I find it hard to feel sorry for Tart and his fellow
travelers. They own the road and have caused their share of misery not only
on atheistic materialists but on each other.

afterlife experiments

Tart devotes two chapters to after-death communication, one
to spontaneous experiences and one to mediumship.
Despite his frequent dirge about the meaninglessness of life without an
afterlife, Tart says he "has little interest in the future." That may
explain why he hasn't personally investigated mediumship, but it also
makes his quest to provide a case for spirit survival rather pointless. If
anything is likely to disappoint the reader looking for spiritual support it
will be Tart's admission that he has no idea what life will be like after
death. He indicates that the idea of immortality isn't one he can make sense
of because the concept of 'eternity' is incomprehensible. And he is pretty
sure that whatever survives won't be a personality and ego. What is most
puzzling to me is that there doesn't seem to be any point to survival of
consciousness. One would think that if life would be meaningless if one
doesn't survive death, then life after death should have some profound
meaningfulness to it. If Tart thinks whatever survives his body's death is
going to lead a meaningful existence, he's kept it a secret.

Since most of the data for communication from the dead by
mediums is clearly presented as if the spirits still retain their
personalities and egos, it is understandable that Tart ignores the "work" of
people like John Edward, James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, and their ilk.
Anyway, in Tart's view most of the claims involving communication with the
dead don't provide evidence for or against survival, but they do bring
comfort to the bereaved. He says if he didn't believe in an afterlife, he'd
be depressed and probably need to take mood-altering drugs to be happy. But
it isn't at all clear why he wouldn't need mood-altering drugs to be happy
given his view that life after death isn't going to be like life with bodily
perceptions minus the bad stuff and last forever. It's also not clear why he
doesn't comment on those mediums who are clearly exploiting the grieving,
not comforting them.

He provides us with nothing we don't already know when he
reminds us that if the mind is non-physical, it might survive the death of
the brain. Like many other parapsychologists, he thinks psi can best be
explained as phenomena existing outside of space and time and impervious to
physical shielding. Tart, however, seems to go further when he implies that
psi can be explained only in non-material terms. If that were true,
then he could easily make his case that the presence of psi means the end of
materialism. He assumes no physical explanation will ever adequately explain
psi, and he believes that there is an abundance of evidence for psi that
can't be explained away by the many alternative explanations given by
skeptical critics (whom he ignores anyway and considers "irrational").

While he doesn't try to provide compelling evidence for life
after death, Tart does reveal some significant biases in his discussion of
the issues of testimony and cold reading. He reveals that he thinks
superstition is not a serious problem for intelligent, educated, careful
observers. Because of this bias, he tends to think that a story from a
scientist is more likely to be true and deserves to be taken as highly
credible. (He collects these kinds of stories on a
website, by the way. Of
course, he has no website for those to post their stories of ghosts that
turned out to be non-paranormal.) He dismisses
cold reading in a sentence or two and doesn't even discuss
subjective validation, the
process by which people endow words, images, or symbols with personal meaning
and significance. Tart gives no indication that he is aware that cold
reading can occur unconsciously and without the intention to deceive by
people who are not "magician mentalists" or "fraudulent psychics."

Despite his own warning that anecdotes don't provide
scientific proof of anything, his book is full of anecdotes of compelling
stories that are going to prove interesting to many people and be taken as
full proof by some. The chapters on communication with spirits are
no different. In one chapter he features the story of
Joseph Waldron and in the other his primary example is
Eileen J. Garrett (1893-1970).
In the chapter on NDEs, he featured the story of
Pam Reynolds.
The main reason Tart doesn't accept examples of OBEs, NDEs, spirit
apparitions, or readings by mediums as proof of spirits leaving the body or
communicating with living minds is that he's not sure that some sort of psi
might not be involved. Just as a stage hypnotist can get a shy patron to
impersonate a clucking chicken or a rock musician, so a medium might
unconsciously impersonate a dead person. Or the medium might be
"unconsciously using telepathy to pull information from the mind of the
sitter inquiring about the deceased or unconsciously using clairvoyance to
pull relevant information from physical records." Parapsychologists who take
this kind of speculation seriously refer to the possible unconscious
application of psi as
super-psi.

reincarnation

In addition to finding the work of
Ian Stevenson
"suggestive" but not proof of reincarnation,
Tart reveals that he was smitten as a young man by
Morey Bernstein's The Search for Bridey Murphy. He even
met Bernstein in 1957 and to this day believes what Bernstein told him. The
editor of the Chicago American discredited the Bridey Murphy story
because he was "very angry at Bernstein for not giving his paper early
rights to the story and had told Bernstein he would get back at him!"
According to Tart, Bernstein told him that the woman interviewed in the
story and identified as Bridie Murphey Corkell
from Wisconsin was actually the mother of the publisher of the Chicago
American. Corkell provided evidence that the woman hypnotized by
Bernstein, Virginia Tighe, did not regress to a previous life under
hypnotism, but was recalling childhood experiences and stories she heard
from Corkell. Frankly, I've never hear this conspiracy story before. Is
there any truth to it? Tart gives no indication he had any interest in
investigating Bernstein's claim any further. He does admit that there are
lots of unconscious fabrications in the reincarnation literature, but that
he thinks some of the stories are true. He admits, however, that he has no
idea how many are true or how to determine which ones are true. He tells us
he's dismayed that we aren't pumping research dollars into investigating
this issue further, then he abruptly ends this chapter as if to say: "maybe
in my next lifetime I'll investigate this further."

Is this really the end of
materialism?

I think Milbourne Christopher had it right:

Many brilliant men have investigated the paranormal but they
have yet to find a single person who can, without trickery, send or receive
[paranormally] even a three-letter word under test conditions.

Nor have they found a single person who can move a pencil
across a table psychokinetically.

But even if such people are found, I don't see how that would
provide evidence for life after death, much less how it would demonstrate
that life is meaningful, either here or in the hereafter. Tart hasn't convinced me that the existence of psi
has any essential connection either to survival of consciousness after death
or to living a meaningful existence before or after dying.

In any case, I hope Tart gets to
Rome before he has to find
out whether some part of his consciousness continues when his brain turns to mush.